Arts, Briefly; Challenging Google

By EDWARD WYATT; Compiled by Lawrence Van Gelder

Published: May 25, 2005

How long is a snippet? That is one of more than a dozen questions directed at Google Inc. this week by the executive director of the Association of American University Presses, the trade group representing university presses. At issue is whether Google Print for Libraries, the company's plan to digitize the collections of some of the country's major university libraries, infringes the copyrights of the authors of many books in those collections. The program will allow users to search the contents of books, displaying context-specific ''snippets'' of the texts of copyrighted works. In a letter to Google dated Friday, the details of which were first reported by BusinessWeek on Monday, Peter Givler, executive director of the press association, said that Google Print for Libraries ''appears to involve systematic infringement of copyright on a massive scale.'' Mr. Givler said the service has ''the potential for serious financial damage'' to the members of the press association, a collection of largely not-for-profit businesses that typically produce and sell scholarly works of nonfiction that have relatively little commercial potential. In a statement, Google said that it has an ''active dialogue with all of our publishing partners,'' adding that it protects the copyright holders by allowing users of Google Print to view only a few short sentences of protected text. EDWARD WYATT